WASHINGTON — President Obama took a break from the vitriol of the health care debate on Wednesday to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 16 luminaries in theater, sports, science, the humanities and politics, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the tennis great Billie Jean King, the actor Sidney Poitier and the physicist Stephen Hawking.
“This is a chance for me — and for the United States of America — to say thank you to some of the finest citizens of this country and of all countries,” Mr. Obama said at the ceremony in the East Room of the White House, praising the recipients for reminding Americans that excellence is still possible “in a moment when cynicism and doubt too often prevail.”
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